BSU football team to stay in town before home games

MUNCIE -- New Ball State football coach Pete Lembo is going to depart from the practice used by his two predecessors and keep his team in Muncie the night before home football games this season.
Former Ball State coaches Brady Hoke and Stan Parrish bused the Cardinals out of town to stay the night before games and then brought them back on the day of the game.
Lembo's plan is to keep his team in town, in less expensive hotels, thus significantly reducing the cost to the program.
"Soon after I arrived and learned the team was traveling down to Noblesville, I immediately shared with (athletic director) Tom Collins and the rest of our athletic administrators that I wanted to change that," said Lembo, who was hired in December to replace the fired Parrish.
Lembo said he decided March 2 that the team would stay either at the Holiday Inn Express or Signature Inn in Muncie the night before five home games at Scheumann Stadium.
The other "home" game will be a neutral-site contest against Indiana at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The Cardinals will be lodged in the Indianapolis area for that game.
"We're trying very hard with this program to connect with this community," Lembo said. "The money we have to spend with this program, I want to spend it in Muncie and make sure we're connecting with business people in this town. If we're going to fill up hotel rooms on Friday nights, I want to do it in this town."
The Cardinals last season spent more than $8,000 the night before each of their six home games to lodge and feed the team at Cambria Suites -- a facility that touts itself as having "oversized suites with luxurious bedding and upscale amenities" -- in Noblesville, Ind. That didn't include the cost of transporting the team to Noblesville by hiring Ball State buses and bringing it back to Muncie on a charter bus.
The total bill for six home games in the 2010 season was about $70,000.Lembo said the hotel bill for the 60-player travel squad, coaches and support personnel this year will be about $2,500 per game. All 105 players in the program, not just the 60 on the travel squad, will eat meals on campus the night before and day of home games instead of having food catered at the hotel for just the travel squad.

 Source http://www.thestarpress.com/